This course introduces students to strategies for style writing of common practice European art music. The issues of harmonic progression, voice leading, and texture are addressed in addition to relevant compositional concepts like repetition, variation, and elaboration. The course aims to offer a creative space even within the restrictions of stylistic emulation.

WS

Great course. Excellent teacher. The course is well thought out, concise, understandable and efficiently covers a lot of material.

CJ

Nov 07, 2017

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Very comprehensive details course. Suitable for students who need to refresh their Harmony knowledge and composition skill.

Na lição

Module Four

In this module, we look at the idea of chord substitution. All of the substitutions we will learn about this week are diatonic, that is, the substituting chord is within the key of the passage. Melodic writing is also introduced, and in the 3 parts of Lesson 7, I walk through creating an entire passage of music from a very simple 2 voice outline. Along the way, I try to articulate the things that one thinks about when creating and working with a melody within a phrase. We will also look at the kinds of harmonic progressions that take place at the end of a phrase. These are called cadences, and they are crucial for the experience of form in common practice music. With cadences introduced, we will be able to take a look at one of the simplest forms found - the period form. With the concepts and techniques learned in this module, you will be able to take a short 4-8 bar passage and generate a small composition from it. In fact, the assignment for the week is to take a sketch of a 5-bar phrase and turn it into a 10-15 bar simple composition that uses a parallel period form. The description of the assignment should tip you off to the fact that the “solution” is just one possibility. Previously, there were always more solutions that the one given, but not many more. This week is different. There will be a bunch of solutions, but I do feel that the solution given is a good implementation of the things learned in the week’s lectures. I would suggest, then, to use your study groups (or to form study groups) to share some of your solutions since they will differ in some ways from the given one. It would also be good preparation for the final project, where you will give such feedback when assessing your peers. I want to also note that while your solution might differ in details from mine, the more general aspects - structure, cadence types and locations, for instance - should not. I want to remind everyone that all of these different ways of engaging with the assignment - completing it, checking it against the solution, getting feedback from others, and giving feedback - are part of the learning process.

Ministrado por

Peter Edwards

Associate Professor

Transcrição

Now, when we start looking at pieces we'll realize that we can break down a piece into what are called phrases. That is something stated and then something new happens and at the end of each of these statements there's going to be a certain kind of harmonic progression. That kind of harmonic progression is going to either give us the sense of finality that something's concluded or a sense that we need to keep going. We're not quite finished. There are a number of different kinds of cadences but the number of them isn't terribly large and I'd like to present them all here. I'd like to start with the cadences that don't give us a sense of finality. By that I mean, if you get to the end of a phrase and you feel like the piece could end there, that's a real conclusion. But a lot of times we get to the end of a phrase and we feel like, well, we can't end there, we need to keep going. In many cases in phrases where we don't have a sense that we could finish the piece there, we have what's called a half cadence. A half cadence... Okay, so we're in C minor, we have the C chord and one chord, the F chord, the four chord and then the five chord. This is very common. We could describe a half cadence as something going to five. So in this case it's four going to five. It could be one going to five but it could be a number of things. It could be two diminished going to five. But when we get to the end of the phrase, the last chord that we hear is a five chord. This thing is going to feel like it really, we're not done. We need at least another phrase or at least another chord to end the piece. Half cadences are extremely common. They're one of I would say three chord types that are really commonly found in classical music. In fact if you only knew those three cadence types and I'll mention which three they are, you could very easily compose very convincing, stylistically convincing fakes of classical era music. There's a variation of this half cadence that you find only in minor keys and it's called the Phrygian Half Cadence. The thing that really marks the Phrygian Half Cadence is this. You notice I'll do some... This is also one, four, five chord progression. Let me do some harmonic analysis though. Here we've got our one and here we've got our four but our four isn't in root position, it's in first inversion and then we get the five. Let's say our phrase ends on the five. Well, what we notice is that this is the sixth scale degree. So here's the first scale degree and go down to the B flat. That's the seventh, here's the sixth scale degree. This sixth scale degree in minor is a semitone away from this fifth scale degree. When we get this, this lowered sixth scale degree going to the fifth scale degree at a cadence, we call that a Phrygian Half Cadence. This name comes... For some of you you might know this. The name actually comes from a church mode called Phrygian and the Phrygian mode is distinctive because there is this between the first scale degree and the second scale degree, there is a semi-tone and so that's why it's so important that this is a semi-tone. That's why this can't happen in major because in major of course the sixth scale degree... Let's say this was C major. This sixth Scale degree would be in A natural. Well, the A natural is a whole tone away from the G and we need that semi-tone. Let me play these two so you can hear them. They're not going to really sound like cadences. They're just going to kind of sound like chord progressions. It's really only in music where we can really hear cadences because it's more than just the chord progression. The chord progression doesn't make the cadence. It's how the music behaves plus the chord progression that gives us a sense of cadence but nonetheless let's hear these progressions. So, half cadence, Phrygian Half Cadence are both what we could call inconclusive cadences. Sometimes they're called weak cadences. We can't end pieces on these cadences. We need to at least have another phrase or at least another couple of chords in order to get a sense of finality and closure. Let's now look though at one of the chords that we really can end on. This is called a perfect authentic cadence. Now, the perfect authentic cadence. Here I have one C minor, two and first inversion. Sorry. Let me put in the Roman numerals. This is two diminished six and it's going to a five and then it's going to one. Let me play this so you can hear it. There's a real sense of closure even just in hearing the harmonic progression. We can hear that this really has a sense of closure. Now the perfect authentic cadences involves five going to one but it's even more specific than that. You need to have root position five chords and these two chords, five and one need to be in root position. The melody note must be the first scale degree, the tonic. If these two things are not the case, then you do not have a perfect authentic cadence. Let's take another example. Let's do this instead. I mean this is terrible voice leading. Sorry about this but I just want to get this so that it's not in root position. Now we have the third and the bass and we have a five and first inversion going to one. Is this a perfect authentic cadence? No, it's not. So well then, what do we call it? We call it something pretty close to perfect authentic cadence. We call it imperfect authentic cadence. And what happens if our melody no, if we did this instead? Something like this. Okay. This is root position now and this is root position. Good we have perfect authentic. No actually, this is the third scale degree. Oh. Okay well then it's not perfect authentic, it's still an imperfect authentic cadence. Now these imperfect authentic cadences are stronger in quality or closer to a sense of closure than the half cadences are but we nonetheless there's a very important thing to recognize with classical music especially in Mozart's era. You will not find a piece of music. Well, okay maybe. I always I'm afraid to say these things, these definites like you'll never find this because you probably, someone can go and look it up and find one but you will almost never find a piece of music from Mozart's era that actually ends on anything other than the first scale degree. So this note, the melody note being the first scale degree is extremely important for not just getting the right cadence but for getting the right sound and imitating the style correctly. We talked also earlier about substitutions, right? So, can we substitute here? If this was say, let's say seven diminished six chord. Let me do that real quick. Maybe something like this. Seven diminished six. Is this acceptable? Yes, this is completely acceptable but this too is an imperfect authentic cadence. So you see there are very strict rules for a perfect authentic cadence. Perfect authentic cadence must have root position five and one chords and it must have the first scale degree in the melody when it gets to the one chord. If it doesn't have those things it's still a kind of authentic cadence but we call it an imperfect authentic cadence. Now, of course a variation on this perfect authentic cadence which gives us a completely different feel and we just experienced it when talking about substitutions between one and six chords, we get this deceptive cadence. Again, deceptive cadence, not always but almost always you're going to find with root position five and six chords. There's an interesting thing to note that I was skipping on a bit in the last presentation. There's an interesting thing to note about voice leading now that we have a real four part texture here I can point it out. This is a root position chord, this six chord but you'll notice something about how it's voiced and you'll say, "Oh, there's an error here" but there isn't. Root, third, third, and fifth. That is, there are two thirds and you say, wait it's a root position try it. It should have two roots but the truth is that especially in a homophonic passage like this and a homorhythmic passage, there are often no good voice leading solutions especially in minor to dealing going from five to six and not getting that augmented second. So the solution to it then is to simply double the third when you get here. Now, if you're not in a simple texture like this you can often include non-chord tones, passing tones for instance and you can completely avoid the augmented second. You can get to a chord that's voiced with two roots, a third and a fifth but that's not possible in this situation. So that's an overview of the cadences that you find in classical music. What I want to do is start looking at some musical examples and start identifying these cadences and start using that as a way to talk about, well, to define phrases and once we have defined phrases we can start talking about those phrases that exist in a passage of music and how they relate to each other.